How to weaken larger Civs in a scenario?

[GeorgeLiquor]

I'm running into an issue with a scenario I'm working on, and I'm wondering if there's a solution to it without resorting to creating a mod.

My 19th Century scenario contains two rather large civilizations - the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. I've had to give these two civilizations a large number of cities over a wide geographical area. This, however, causes these Civilizations to become much more powerful much earlier/later than they should be - the Russian Empire is supposed to be behind the rest of Europe in terms of modernization, while the Ottoman Empire is supposed to be in terminal decline - yet by the later 19th Century, the Russians and Ottomans are usually both in the Top 3 positions, with a high degree of technological advancement.

My current strategy is to put these two Civilizations further behind on the tech tree, give them minimal buildings in most of their cities (usually just a granary/lighthouse and a religious building) and leave swathes of their resources unimproved. Are there any other steps I can take to balance the game and keep these large empires "behind" the smaller guys?

 

[Nightinggale]

The only ideas I can think of would be to add a multiplier to how much research a tech needs on a per player basis and/or prevent certain players from researching anything not already researched by X players. Sadly both requires programming. Both would be doable in the DLL, though there is a research callback to python, which might work with a little creativity.

 

[Leoreth]

Seems like your problem is that large empires have too much of an advantage in your games over smaller ones. The mechanism Civ4 uses to balance against the benefits of large empires is maintenance. So you should increase the weights of number of cities and/or distance maintenance (I think you can do so in the map size XML, otherwise handicap is also a possibility). While this will hurt all players across the board, small and compact empires will barely feel a difference while the likes of Russia and Ottomans should be hit by significant cost increases.

While Nightinggale's approach would also work, I'd suggest to try this first because it a) does not require extra coding and b) would not hard code penalties against specific civs which I think is more elegant.

 

[f1rpo]

Could you set a higher handicap for the Russians and Ottomans? I've never made a scenario, but I know that the Earth1000AD scenario does this. Not sure how effective it is.

Spoiler :

...
CityList=TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_XIKANG
Handicap=HANDICAP_EMPEROR
EndPlayer
BeginPlayer
Team=1
CivDesc=TXT_KEY_CIV_JAPAN_DESC
...
CityList=TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_SADO
Handicap=HANDICAP_MONARCH
EndPlayer

 

[CHINCHIN]

What the ground does is strengthen the cities of the small empires integrating great people. It can be done editing the file of the stage directly, much more comfortable and fast.

Spoiler :

BeginCity

CityOwner=0

CityName=NAGASAKI

CityPopulation=10

BuildingType=BUILDING_WALLS

BuildingType=BUILDING_BARRACKS

BuildingType=BUILDING_BUNKER

BuildingType=BUILDING_GRANARY

BuildingType=BUILDING_AQUEDUCT

BuildingType=BUILDING_HOSPITAL

BuildingType=BUILDING_LIGHTHOUSE

BuildingType=BUILDING_HARBOR

BuildingType=BUILDING_CUSTOM_HOUSE

BuildingType=BUILDING_FORGE

BuildingType=BUILDING_FACTORY

BuildingType=BUILDING_JAPANESE_SHALE_PLANT

BuildingType=BUILDING_LIBRARY

BuildingType=BUILDING_UNIVERSITY

BuildingType=BUILDING_THEATRE

BuildingType=BUILDING_COLOSSEUM

BuildingType=BUILDING_MARKET

BuildingType=BUILDING_GROCER

BuildingType=BUILDING_BANK

BuildingType=BUILDING_SUPERMARKET

BuildingType=BUILDING_COURTHOUSE

BuildingType=BUILDING_JAIL

BuildingType=BUILDING_BUDDHIST_TEMPLE

BuildingType=BUILDING_CONFUCIAN_TEMPLE

BuildingType=BUILDING_TAOIST_TEMPLE

ReligionType=RELIGION_BUDDHISM

ReligionType=RELIGION_CONFUCIANISM

ReligionType=RELIGION_TAOISM

CorporationType=CORPORATION_5

FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_ENGINEER

FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_ENGINEER

Player0Culture=100

EndCity
[/ SPOILER]